Thursday, September 15, 2011

We passed up the New York Times iPhone story earlier because it didn’t really contain any new product information. We’ve been hearing early October for awhile now in terms of when the iPhone gets released. Therefore, the announcement in ‘weeks’ isn’t news either.

Neither is the 8MP camera which I was on hand to hear Sony CEO Howard Stringer reveal earlier this year. Nor the A5 processor which isn’t even a small stretch. And the best bit:

two people with knowledge of the inner workings of Apple’s next-generation iPhones say either the iPhone 5 or iPhone 6 will include a new chip that is made by Qualcomm.Helpful.

But here’s some real info: We’ve heard that there are indeed two different models of iPhone coming out next month (announced this month?) We still think October 7th is the scheduled release date give or take any delays. We’ve heard the low-end model, which is essentially an iPhone 4 look-alike (glass front and back), is rolling off the assembly line in big numbers right now. Apple expects to have 10+ million of these things on hand for launch and full ramped production into the holiday shopping season. These will be priced aggressively and be everywhere.

They will also be offered in both prepaid and post paid plans (this is a big deal – more to come on that).

But there is some bad news…

It appears that the tear-drop shaped iPhone 5 with larger screen and thinner, rounder body is seeing continued design and production delays, at least on one assembly line (Apple has multiple production sources – Pegatron, Foxconn, etc). We therefore think that iPhone 5 will be delayed slightly at the very least and may see shortages all the way into 2012.

The iPhone 5 itself is a sight to behold, we’ve been told. It is impossibly light, yet much firmer than Samsung Galaxy phones which are backed in plastic. The camera rivals point and shoot cameras and will be a major marketing point for this device.

As you probably know, information comes fast and furious in the run up to announcements. We’ll have lots more coming soon.

Microsoft has announced that the Metro style browser in Windows 8 will not support Flash or any other plugins.

The Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as possible, and plug-in free. The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web.

Running Metro style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers. Plug-ins were important early on in the web's history. But the web has come a long way since then with HTML5. Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style UI.

*thanks iclarified*

It took everyone this long to realize that Apple was right all along? Now even Microsoft built a device and web browser only for HTML5. Well I'll be dammed, I guess Apple was right!

A Case-Mate product page briefly surfaced today showing six different case designs for the iPhone 5 before being pulled, reports BGR and TIMN.

Case-Mate has published a page on its website with six different case designs for the new iPhone 5, and we're loving the radical new body shown in the images. We've heard tons of speculation that the iPhone 5 will be thinner and lighter than the current model and these cases suggest it will have tapered edges and a slim profile as well. Finally, the images appear to an aluminum back on the fifth-generation iPhone, which also jibes with earlier reports.

TIMN managed to grab a full page capture before the page was pulled. Check out the images below...

*thanks iclarified*

This is the same design iPhone 5/4s as the cases we have found, our pictures below:

A frustration for many users in the past is the fact that Apple IDs are currently not able to be merged. As Apple’s iOS 5 and iCloud near launch, Apple might be taking an important step to allow the merging of Apple IDs. iOS 5 includes several services such as iMessage, iCloud integration, Game Center, FaceTime, iTunes, the App Store, and iBooks.

Some users are frustrated because all of those services are spread across multiple Apple IDs. For example, some people have a separate Apple ID for iCloud (especially migrators from MobileMe) and for iTunes/App Store/iMessage/FaceTime, etc. According to an answer from Apple’s executive relations team, as reported by MacRumors, Apple could be readying a solution that merges all of a user’s Apple IDs:

Tim Cook about the issue, and quickly received a phone call from an Apple executive relations employee. She had spoken to the team responsible for Apple IDs and acknowledged that they understood the issue and that more people would run into the problem with iCloud. She also repeated that there is no way yet to combine accounts but revealed they are working on it. In the meantime, she recommended picking a single account to plan on keeping indefinitely and to make all future purchases on that account.There you have it.?